CombiningImages

Combining Images

There are a number of ways we can combine images together to create a new image:

• Superimposition• Sandwich• Montage

SuperimpositionMultiple exposures on the camera

One of the simplest ways of creating this type of image used to be to not wind on the camera, however this used to happen so many times by mistake ‘ruining’ images that camera manufacturers have stopped us from being able to do this.

Now instead we have to

• Gently wind on the camera while holding the rewind crank

or

• Run the film through the camera twice.

The second method is more hit and miss as the film ‘frames’ are less likely to line up leading to a more experimental print.

Multiple exposures on the camera

Sandwich printing

This term is used to describe the process of creating an image by binding together any number of translucent images and shining light through them to expose the photographic paper.

You could use two or more:

Photographic negatives

or

Acetate sheets

The negatives from these 3 images have been ‘sandwiched’ together in the neg holder of the enlarger to create the image on the next slide.

This image could also have been created by photocopying the images, in negative, onto acetate and then laying them directly on top of the photographic paper and exposing the paper with an enlarger.

This is the finished ‘sandwich’ printed image

MontageA montage is an image that has been constructed from several prints. The prints are cut out and stuck together to create a new image. This image can then be re-photographed to create a brand new image.

We can create montages using Adobe Photoshop. Images can be combined by opening the images on separate layers and arranging them to create the desired effect.

The following tutorials will help you to create composite images with Photoshop

Introduction to layers

Basic layers tutorial

Combining images using masks

Compositing inside a silhouette

Photographer and former ballet dancer Tierney Gearon is known for her movingimages dipicting the complex relationships in her own family

Tierney GearonExplosure

In 2001, naked photographs of her children on show at the Saatchi Gallery's photography exhibition, I Am Camera, caused an uproar in the tabloid press

The police requested that the photographs be taken down, but when the gallery refused, no charges were brought about

Shortly after the furore over the photographs of her children, Gearon began to take nude self-portaits

One of the rolls of film she had used for this new exploration was accidentallydouble-exposed with a series of celebrity portraits. Intrigued by the results, she experimented further with the technique

'Two boring images suddenly become more interesting than a regular photograph.'

Explosure, an exhibition of her fairy tale double-exposed images, opened at Phillips de Pury & Company in London on January 6

Click here to link to an article in the Telegraph on Tierney Gearon’s work

Tierney Gearon: double exposure